Gender dominates Julia Gillard's first post-election appearance

In her first public appearance since the election, Julia Gillard has reflected on the tumultuous times as Prime Minister, shared insights on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and revealed what she'll be doing in the near future.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has tonight made her first Australian public appearance since the election in front of an audience of diehard fans, in conversation with one of her staunchest defenders, Anne Summers.

How Julia Gillard chooses to frame her legacy and the past six years of Labor government is going to be crucial to the Labor Party's future.

Our reporter Heather Ewart has been watching the event at the Opera House and joins me from there now.

Heather, given that Julia Gillard's been all-but-invisible since she was dumped as Labor leader, how much interest was there in this event?

HEATHER EWART, REPORTER: A lot of interest. Not just amongst the media, but of course amongst her strongest supporters. 2,500 here at the Opera House tonight who very much wanted to be here. The tickets for this event I think were sold out within four hours of them going on sale. The same for the event in Melbourne, a similar event in Melbourne tomorrow night. People were arriving here by bus from outside Sydney, people were flying in from other states. These were people who are very enthusiastic Gillard supporters. They were having drinks on a warm, almost summer's night here in Sydney on the forecourt outside the Opera House. Almost a carnival atmosphere; they were so excited about this.

LEIGH SALES: And what were the notable parts of the conversation tonight?

HEATHER EWART: I think the most notable parts were that Julia Gillard clearly felt that she was amongst friends, as indeed she was. There was a very positive response to almost everything she said, constant cheering, a standing ovation when she arrived. I think it was a two-fold thing. She wanted to reassure those people that she was doing OK, she was coping fine. But also, she wanted to defend her legacy. And gender here played a very big role. It was a constant feature of the evening. It came up again and again. Her message I think was, "Don't let this happen to any other woman, as it did to me." Also, some undertones referring to Kevin Rudd without mentioning his name that she had behaved in a very different fashion after being kicked out of the prime ministership than he had. Let's take a listen to some of those highlights.

ANNE SUMMERS, HOST: People have said to me, "How is she? Is she OK?" So that's my question tonight: are you OK?

(Laughter from Julia Gillard and audience)

JULIA GILLARD, FORMER PRIME MINISTER: Yes, Anne, I am OK and I should say, better for being here, so thank you very much.

(Applause from audience)

ANNE SUMMERS: You didn't know until you actually walked into the room.

JULIA GILLARD: We knew we were gonna lose. It was a question of by how much. ... But there was also this sense of: what does it say about Labor culture?, what does it say about the kind of political party we're going to be in the future? And so I quickly concluded after the meeting that the best thing I could do is accept that that was the judgment that had been made and to give a gift of silence to the Labor Party during the course of the campaign to do absolutely nothing.

(Applause from audience)

ANNE SUMMERS: What do you say to those people, and there still are people who say this - I've had people say this to me just in the last week - that you stabbed Kevin Rudd in the back back in June, 2010 and what he did to you was basically just the reverse of the mirror image of what you'd done to him? How do you answer that accusation?

JULIA GILLARD: Look, I think that accusation's sort of settled into the political narrative. Of course my view of this is to ask your leader to have a leadership ballot, that's legitimate. To do things continuously that undermine the Labor Party and a Labor government, then of course that shouldn't be done by anyone.

ANNE SUMMERS: So the key difference was that you asked for a ballot, he didn't?

JULIA GILLARD: I think the key difference is every day I was Deputy Prime Minister, I spent all of my time doing everything I could to have the Labor government prosper.

(Applause from audience)

ANNE SUMMERS: I know people who've said they cried seeing them, because they cried not just for you - but obviously for you - but also they cried for us that we could've reached a level of political discourse in this country where it was OK to draw you, a woman, but you, the Prime Minister, in that way. I mean, it must've been very, very upsetting, surely?

JULIA GILLARD: I would've said more like murderous rage, really.

(Laughter from Anne Summers. Applause from audience)

JULIA GILLARD: I had thought we were beyond that and it's kind of depressing that we're not. But at least we know exactly where the balance of it is now and what more remains to be done for women to be truly equal. And I think even people who may not remember me as a good prime minister, I think for whoever the next woman is, there'll be a bit of a, you know, pause, breathe, "Whatever else this female prime minister does, we don't want it to be like that for her again," and there'll be (inaudible) ...

ANNE SUMMERS: We hope, we hope.

(Applause from audience)

ANNE SUMMERS: But then of course that very same Mr Abbott accused you of using the gender card.

(Laughter from Julia Gillard and audience)

ANNE SUMMERS: Now why is it that this expression is used whenever women stick up for their rights?

JULIA GILLARD: You just feel like saying, well, if it was your daughter and she was putting up with sexist abuse at work, what would you advise her to do? Because apparently, if she complains, she is playing the victim and playing gender wars, and if she doesn't complain, then she really is a victim. So, in your analysis, what does this woman do? And we've got to be able to say strongly to women and girls, "You've got a right to an environment that treats you with respect, treats you as an equal and raising your voice about that isn't starting a war, it isn't playing the victim, it's just asking for what simply is right."

(Applause from audience)

ANNE SUMMERS: Equality.

LEIGH SALES: That was of course the former Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaking earlier this evening, just a short time ago. Our reporter Heather Ewart is standing by at the Opera House.

Heather, we could hear the rapturous response that greeted almost every word out of Julia Gillard's mouth from that particular crowd. Her critics obviously would view her performance as Prime Minister quite differently, even people within her own party. Was she substantially challenged in any way or did she admit any mistakes?

HEATHER EWART: Look, it wasn't really that sort of event, as you could hear from the constant applause there this evening. What she did concede though was that there were moments where she'd reflected on where she had gone wrong and times - since being thrown out of the job, times where she thought about how she could've done things better and differently. But we didn't ever hear exactly what those points were, what she thought she could've done differently. She was also asked about communication skills. She talked there about the media making life difficult. I guess she was referring there to the constant 24-hour news cycle. But we didn't again get details of exactly what she meant by that. One point that really stood out to me and I think probably tells something about what her life was really like in The Lodge in those final stages was where she talked about a woman in The Lodge whose job it was early every morning to deliver the newspapers. And this woman, Julia Gillard found out later, would constantly wrestle with what newspapers to put on top, try and find the more positive headlines. And as Julia Gillard herself said tonight, there were never any positive headlines. But again, she didn't go to why that was.